Regan's Staff: Down and Out in Santa Monica

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Judith Regan likely won't be the only person to lose her job in the <I>If I Did It</I> fallout: Her imbroglio with HarperCollins leaves a dozen loyal New York publishing types stranded in Los Angeles. Six months ago, Regan relocated her imprint from Harper HQ in Manhattan to sunny Santa Monica so that she could more easily work on cross-platform, book-related movie and TV projects. (Yay, synergy!) She uprooted her publishing, marketing, and editorial staffers from Manhattan, and they headed west as recently as October, signing apartment and car leases and learning to call highways "freeways." Then Regan got the ax. Now her bagel-craving staffers are spending their days on a half-floor in a gorgeous Santa Monica office building, praying for a lucrative severance deal from HarperCollins, which presumably won't keep the pricey office open. "We're just waiting to hear from corporate," says one staffer. "We thought there would be an announcement last Friday, but there wasn't." Erin Crum, a HarperCollins spokesperson in New York, says only that the office's fate will be decided "at the appropriate time."<br> —<I>Arianne Cohen</I>

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Judith Regan likely won't be the only person to lose her job in the If I Did It fallout: Her imbroglio with HarperCollins leaves a dozen loyal New York publishing types stranded in Los Angeles. Six months ago, Regan relocated her imprint from Harper HQ in Manhattan to sunny Santa Monica so that she could more easily work on cross-platform, book-related movie and TV projects. (Yay, synergy!) She uprooted her publishing, marketing, and editorial staffers from Manhattan, and they headed west as recently as October, signing apartment and car leases and learning to call highways "freeways." Then Regan got the ax. Now her bagel-craving staffers are spending their days on a half-floor in a gorgeous Santa Monica office building, praying for a lucrative severance deal from HarperCollins, which presumably won't keep the pricey office open. "We're just waiting to hear from corporate," says one staffer. "We thought there would be an announcement last Friday, but there wasn't." Erin Crum, a HarperCollins spokesperson in New York, says only that the office's fate will be decided "at the appropriate time." —Arianne Cohen